PARAMEDIC STUDIES

Paramedic Practices in UK

Paramedic Practices in UK

Introduction

'Please keep me safe'. This simple but profoundly important hope is the very minimum upon which every child and young person should be able to depend. Sadly, sometimes even our imaginations fail to help us understand the dependency of young children or the vulnerability of adolescents, regardless of their displays of bravado. Most adults recognise that children and young people need security, stability, love and encouragement. As the Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks put it, “Children grow to fill the space we create for them, and if it's big, they grow tall”. The years of childhood pass all too quickly and become the foundation upon which the rest of life depends.

Policies, legislation, structures and procedures are, of course, of immense importance, but they serve only as the means of securing better life opportunities for each young person. It is the robust and consistent implementation of these policies and procedures which keeps children and young people safe. For example, organisational boundaries and concerns about sharing information must never be allowed to put in jeopardy the safety of a child or young person. Whilst children and young people's safety is a matter for us all, a heavy responsibility has rightly been placed on the key statutory services to ensure it happens.

Nurses practicing in today's rapidly changing health care environment are increasingly becoming aware of the need to evaluate and improve their practice as well as consider the political, social and structural issues affecting it. Because change is occurring all around us, it is important for nurses to be able to analyse and respond to new and different challenges in a proactive way. Developing critical thinking and reflective skills will assist you to meet the challenges of providing care in a context of rapid change and to become a critically reflective practitioner.

In the UK, prehospital care is provided primarily by the ambulance service. Ambulance services are provided by over 30 NHS Ambulance Service Trusts which exclusively supply paramedic level emergency ambulance services and provide many non-emergency patient transport services to hospitals and clinics. A number of these Trusts also provide other services, such as professional ambulance training, and more recently nurse-based advice telephone lines accessible to the public, as part of the NHS Direct service.

Emergency services are provided by paramedic staffed emergency ambulances, and single staffed fast paramedic response units either in the form of estate car vehicles or motor cycles in more urban areas. Helicopter and fixed-wing air ambulances are operated by a number of ambulance services. Scotland has had a dedicated air ambulance system for many years, utilising both rotary and fixed-wing aircraft in more remote areas. Helicopters operated as a primary response staffed by paramedics are also operated by a number of services. These have, in some areas, had their operational use refined to bypass smaller acute hospitals, and fly major and multiple injury cases direct to nearby major hospitals with neurosurgery and cardiothoracic specialties on ...